Vertical liquid medium pump systems (hereinafter "Pumps") have been made for years. Conventional Pumps have been described in numerous patents. Some of these patents are U.S. Pat. No. 5,076,762 (Inventor: Lykes et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 4,854,828 (Inventor: Haentjens), U.S. Pat. No. 4,772,183 (Inventor: Durden), U.S. Pat. No. 4,394,140 (Inventor: Liljestrand), U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,221 (Inventor: Lobanoff), U.S. Pat. No. 3,782,860 (Inventors: DeLancey et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 3,179,827 (Inventor: Baker), U.S. Pat. No. 2,766,602 (Inventor: Lung), U.S. Pat. No. 2,149,602 (Inventor: Horvath), U.S. Pat. No. 1,801,103 (Inventor: Mummert), and U.S. Pat. No. 1,709,478 (Inventor: Layne), which are all hereby incorporated by reference for disclosing various embodiments of the conventional Pumps. An example of the Pump used in a preferred embodiment of the present invention is Model VCRE, which is made by Buffalo Pumps, Inc. of North Tonawanda, N.Y., the assignee of this application.
The Model VCRE has been manufactured by Buffalo Pumps, Inc. for the last thirty (30) years and is illustrated in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 illustrates the conventional elements found on Pumps 8. The conventional elements include a motor support 10, a pump shaft 12, a pumping section 14, a casing cover 16, a guide bearing 18 and a connecting column 20. The pump shaft 12 extends from the motor support 10 into the pumping section 14. Mounted on the pumping section 14 is the casing cover 16 (a portion of the top section of the pumping section 14) which has an aperture 22. The aperture 22 receives the pump shaft 12 and within aperture 22 is the guide bearing 18. The guide bearing 18 ensures the pump shaft 12 remains in the proper position but does so by not being in constant contact with the pump shaft 12.
The connecting column 20 connects the motor support 10 to the pumping section 14, and obviously surrounds the pump shaft 12. The connecting column 20 has a plurality of bottom apertures 24 to allow a priming instrument 26 to apply a desired medium to the pump shaft 12 within the pumping section 14, and at least one upper aperture 28 so the pumped medium 7 does not contact the motor support 10.
A problem with the conventional pump 8 is that when the pump shaft 12 rotates the pumped medium 7, the pump shaft 12 creates a vortex of the pumped medium 7 in the connecting column 20. The vortex draws air into the . pumped medium 7 which results in the air becoming entrained within the medium 7. The entrained air-medium 7 is then dispersed throughout the entire pumped medium 7. Such a result is undesirable because it is known to those skilled in the art that entrained air-medium, at certain levels, adversely affect the operation of other instruments 30 that receive the pumped medium 7.